can Donald Trump hold on to suburban voters in battleground Wisconsin?

A woman knocked on the door of the Democratic party office in the village of Grafton, Wisconsin, to find sanctuary, telling the county chair that she is the only Democrat in her area and that Kamala Harris supporters are afraid to put up lawn signs.

Deb Dassow, the Ozaukee County Democratic party chair, reassured the visitor: “Everyone always says ‘I’m the only one in my neighbourhood’. You’re not.”

Ozaukee is one of three counties that make up a Republican stronghold in the affluent suburbs of Milwaukee, the state’s largest city. Collectively, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington are known as the “WOW” counties, where many residents say the political divide is palpable.

All three will almost certainly go for Donald Trump, but the Republican party’s vote share has been decreasing steadily for more than a decade as Democrats have chipped away at its margins. The question now is whether Republicans can halt — or reverse — the decline.

Vice-President Kamala Harris has pitched her message to moderate Republican and undecided voters in Wisconsin, particularly women. She has appeared twice with former US congresswoman Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic of Trump.

The second time they visited Waukesha County they brought with them another Never-Trumper, local conservative radio commentator Charlie Sykes, in a direct bid to men.

“We see the highest amount of undecided voters left in the county are a bloc of college-educated men”, said Waukesha County Democratic party chair Matt Moreno.

Shawn Reilly, mayor of Waukesha city, endorsed Harris on Wednesday, the first time he has publicly supported a Democrat. He broke from the Republican party after January 6, 2021. “If Donald Trump becomes our president . . . we are looking at becoming a fascist country”, he said on Friday.

As she prepared to vote early in Menomonee Falls, a village in Waukesha County, Stephanie Smith said deciding who to vote for was difficult in a divided household in which her three daughters were against Trump. She had to put some issues she cared about on the backburner to focus on the economy, she added.

“I was actually on the fence until the last minute. I flip-flopped 25 times before I made my final decision.” She declined to say who she voted for.

“The WOW counties are critical”, said Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, because more than 640,000 people live there and “more than any other part of the state, they’ve been swinging from red to purple”.

“Historically, the WOW counties are the Republican vote factory of Wisconsin, and the place where the GOP can cancel out the Democratic extra votes from [state capital] Madison and Milwaukee”, Wikler added.

But now, “the number of Democratic votes coming out of the WOW counties is exploding.”

When asked for whom she was voting, Waukesha County resident Lacritia Spence looked around and mouthed “Kamala”. She said that while Republicans dominate in her county, “it’s very surprising how many Democrats are actually in the area . . . It does feel good that it’s a little bit more balanced.”

In 2016, Hillary Clinton took 33.3 per cent, 37 per cent and 27.2 per cent of the vote in Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties, respectively. In 2020, President Joe Biden’s respective share grew to 38.8 per cent, 43.1 per cent and 30.3 per cent.

Wisconsin is one of the seven battleground states that will decide the presidential election, one of the tightest in modern history. Trump leads Harris by a razor-thin 0.5 percentage points in the state, according to the FT’s poll tracker, meaning the candidates are in effect deadlocked. In 2020, Biden won Wisconsin by just 20,682 votes.

Both candidates will campaign in Wisconsin on Wednesday, with Trump returning to the state on Friday for a rally in Milwaukee.

From 2012 to 2020, there were 36,000 net fewer Republican votes in the WOW counties, according to Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, the gold standard Wisconsin survey. With the presidential race decided on such a thin margin in Wisconsin, “that’s a big loss for the GOP. They’re having to make that up in the north and western part of the state”.

The decline in Republicans’ margins has jolted party officials into action to ensure voters who have tended to stay home in recent years turn out to vote.

Alex Leykin, chair of the Ozaukee County Republican party, said “the problem is when you relax and Republicans become complacent, apathetic to what’s going on, because they just accept the fact that they’re always going to win this county . . . all of a sudden, your vote matters.”

He said the county party had done its first text campaign and increased its doorknocking.

Blake Aker, 32, of Waukesha voted in a presidential election for the first time, casting his ballot for Trump. His wife, Kiera, who voted for Trump for a third time, said “abortion, the border, [and the] economy” were the main factors in the couple’s decision — “abortion in the sense that we don’t want it”.

Her husband said he decided to come to the polls “since I’ve officially been adulting, I’ve actually seen these things affect my daily life”.

Washington County Republican party chair Randy Marquardt said he was also focusing on “infrequent voters . . . to get that extra margin”. He hopes to increase Republican turnout by about 2 percentage points from 2020. “The pressure’s been on.”

Dassow and Moreno think their party will continue to gain ground in the WOW counties this election cycle, with women at the core of the effort.

Democratic officials and organisers in the area said the US Supreme Court decision in 2022 to strike down the national right to obtain an abortion galvanised WOW women. It has helped spark an underground movement of Democratic women who gather secretly in homes to keep other community members — and their husbands — from knowing their affiliation.

Abortion is the “number one” issue among women in the greater Milwaukee area, said Kate Duffy, founder of Motherhood for Good, a grassroots organisation. Attending these meetings are many women who are voting Democratic for the first time.

“I think there’s even some remorse that they thought that it was only [abortion]” under threat in 2020, but now see “IVF and miscarriage management being impacted”.

Some women do not want to be out volunteering in public, said Dassow, but will partake in quieter, non-traditional political activities such as making Taylor Swift-style friendship bracelets that state support for Harris, discussing issues as they bead.

College-educated women in Waukesha County “are giving us a chance for the first time, and it’s taken years”, said Moreno.

“Our whole strategy has been we have to start earning people’s ears”, an effort driven by women who are the local party’s main source of volunteers.

“Suburban women can swing the election”, said Wikler.